The Spanish Garden: Creating Your Spanish Style Garden

A Spanish Garden is different from other gardens. Mainly because it is a private space where different types of exotic plants may be grown that would not survive in other places, as the climate supports it here. However, the Spanish Garden should be well planned and regularly tended so that the Spanish style garden will retain its beauty. You must ensure unity and harmony when picking out landscaping designs for a Spanish garden. Also, Spanish gardens may be easily created in the United States by following some guidelines.

Creating The Boundaries Of A Spanish Style Garden

Of the Spanish garden it may be said that they are enclosed by stucco walls. These may be added to a Spanish garden or cypress evergreen screens with wrought iron fences behind them may be used. In some Spanish gardens, short walls are used to demarcate different areas of the garden so be creative and design this space innovatively. Vines may be grown to cover the walls and increase privacy in your Spanish garden.

Elements Of Spanish Garden Design

When you are creating your Spanish garden, some of these tips might come in handy for your Spanish garden design.

• Use water in your Spanish garden design which was originally derived from the Moorish influence. A wall fountain, rock covered pool or ornate water fountain will not only provide a soothing effect but also create the ideal ambience for the Spanish garden.
• Use terracotta tiles and containers to create a garden within a garden with one part leading into another
• Edge to edge tiling or paving with some aesthetically placed plants will also build a Spanish style garden.
• A Spanish garden design incorporates shady areas as the climate in Spain is hot and some cooling areas provide a retreat for both the gardener and some of his plants.
• Garden furniture in your Spanish garden should be something comfortable such as wrought iron or lovely cedar pieces.
• Wind chimes and Spanish decorative pieces can make this an appropriately named Spanish garden.
• Make the Spanish garden colorful, both by using colored decorations and growing beautiful and colorful perenial garden plants.

What To Grow In The Spanish Style Garden

First find out what plants can be grown under the climactic conditions of your Spanish garden. Then try and select some Spanish plants so that this may be as authentic a real Spanish garden, in design and landscaping plants grown. Palm trees, pine trees and oranges are usually grown besides daisies, lavender, rosemary, cactus and grapes.

What To Remember While Maintaining A Spanish Garden Design

The Spanish garden created should be a space where you enjoy yourself and which adds to the peacefulness of the surroundings. Therefore, in your Spanish garden grow plants that can be tended easily and those that you enjoy looking after.

Spanish gardens are of different types and depending on your style and needs you may create a Spanish garden design of your choice. The Spanish style garden is the ideal retreat from the cares and worries of the world and to make it your peace haven plan well in advance and execute your thoughts sincerely to create this space.

References:

1. Spanish Garden Furniture - Do It Yourself

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Cabbage Disease Due to Cabbage Maggots, Caterpillars & Moths

The cabbage family is inclusive of a number of different kinds of plants including plants such as watercress and cauliflower. In a normal garden they are under the threat of a number of cabbage pests such as the cabbage maggot, the cabbage worm, cabbage caterpillar etc. These cabbage pests damage the crops and cause cabbage disease.

What Are Cabbage Maggots?

The cabbage maggot is a bright milky white and is soft-bodied. They are usually found in clusters at the roots of the plant. Each cabbage worm grows to be about 1/3 inches long. The cabbage maggot attacks the root of the plant causing channels to from in them. A plant that has been damaged by a cabbage caterpillar will slimy or brown in the damaged area. The plant will slowly start to wilt? and will eventually die.

Cabbage maggots prefer moist weather and presently thrive in the United States due to optimal weather conditions. The adult cabbage caterpillar is a fly and closely resembles a common house fly. However like in most other cabbage pests, it is the cabbage worm rather than the cabbage fly that causes damage to the plants.

Other Commonly Found Cabbage Pests

Other cabbage pests that may damage crops are the cabbage looper, the imported cabbage worm, cross striped cabbage worm, the cabbage moth.

• The cabbage looper is light green in color and moves in a looping motion. These particular cabbage pests are found on the under side of the leaves and feed mostly on the leaf veins. They slowly chew their way to the centre causing great damage to the plant.
• The imported cabbage worm has larvae that are velvety green with a thin white stripe. The imported cabbage worm causes similar damage to the loopers but feed closer to the centre of the plant. Larger larva can cause great damage to the plant.
• The larva of the cross striped cabbage worm is bluish grey in color with black stripes across its back. In addition it has yellow and black stripe running across on each side of its body. The cross striped cabbage worm feeds on all tender parts of the plant but prefer terminal buds. These cabbage pests are also found in clusters.
• The cabbage moth has larvae that are lime green, small, spindle-shaped and have a forked tail. The adult cabbage moth has a small grayish brown body with folded wings. The larvae cause damage to buds

It should be kept in mind that at most of times it is the cabbage caterpillar that causes more damage than the adult cabbage moth. Thus it is important to start damage control at an early stage.

Cabbage Disease Caused By Cabbage Pests

The presence of cabbage pests can lead to a number of cabbage diseases that can be very harmful for the crop. The cabbage caterpillar and the looper cause holes in the leaves that lead to the plant starving and eventually dying. Cabbage maggots that affect the roots of the plant cause the leaves to wilt.

The plants of the cabbage family are affected by other cabbage diseases as well, that may not be caused by cabbage pests. These are:

• damping- of ( where the seedling dies)
• bacterial soft rot ( leaves turn yellow starting at the edges)
• leaf spots ( brown lesions appear on the leaves)
• black rot ( leaves turn yellow or brown)

Control of Cabbage Pests and Cabbage Disease

It is important to pick off the larvae of cabbage worms as soon as they appear as it is the larvae that cause the most amount of damage to the plant. In-furrow application of insecticides may give some respite from cabbage maggots. Soil insecticides may also be used to prevent and control the spread of cabbage worms and caterpillars.

Plant disease and garden pests are despised by every gardener so whether it is cabbage worms that worry you or pests in the form of garden weeds, control them actively before they start taking over your garden.

Reference:

1. Cabbage Insects - University of Kentucky Entomology
2. Cabbage Maggot - Government of Alberta, Agriculture and Rural Development

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Gardening For Kids: Tips For Gardening With Kids

Gardening with kids can be both delightful and a wonderful way of educating children early in life about nature’s beauties. Not only will kids planting find this a wonderful activity, but kid gardening will also be a big step towards creating a youth garden.

Why Kid Gardening?

Why should you involve your kids with gardening in the first place? Kids enjoy playing with mud, playfully using a hose and watching things grow so gardening for kids can be a lot of fun. Further, if they are made a part of the gardening process they will surely enjoy it even more. As much as they should be introduced to kids planting, they should also be consulted about the design of the youth garden as they can come up with colorful and innovative ideas. As you help in gardening for kids, watch their inquisitive minds come up with questions that can only make them better future gardeners.

Kid Gardening: Preparing The Soil, Watering & Weeding

Start with the basics when gardening with kids. When gardening for kids teach them the importance of preparing the soil well to ensure a healthy plant in a youth garden. This entails looking into the pH of the soil, checking the weather that can help grow the right plant and adding the right fertilizers. Loamy soil is best to work with as it should ideally not be too clayey or sandy in a youth garden. While watering a plant in a youth garden is an enjoyable activity for all ages, while gardening with kids, it is also very important to teach them about the environment and the importance of conserving water while gardening. In addition, the importance of weeding should be emphasized as well when with gardening with kids.

What To Grow In Kids' Gardens

When gardening with kids, it is advisable to start with food items that can be grown easily and in a short span of time. For kids gardens, growing watercress, radishes and lettuce are excellent choices as they will be the quickest to grow in 6-8 weeks. Bean shoots may also be grown quickly in a youth garden and eaten in a salad or sandwich.

• First soak the seeds overnight.
• Next take a wide mouthed jar and place the drained seeds in them, covering the top with a wire mesh through which water and air can pass.
• Water regularly, always draining away the excess and enjoy the bean sprouts in a few days.

What To Remember While Maintaining Kids Gardens

When gardening with kids, there are certain things to keep in mind which will make kids planting their own youth garden a more enjoyable process for them and hopefully make them lifelong gardeners!

• Gardening tools kids will enjoy using will increase interest in kid gardening so when gardening with kids, choose your tools well.
• Subscribe to Kids Garden News for monthly e-mail alerts on gardening conferences, resources and more.
• Exchange ideas with fellow gardeners who are also gardening with kids to increase the variety of your youth garden and learn better kids planting methods.
• Though mistakes may be made while gardening for kids, do not hesitate to learn from them to create a better youth garden.
• From gardening with kids one can easily move on to garden crafts such as painted flower pots to garden plant markers or even innovative garden design such as a fairy garden.

One of the easiest ways to make your kids eat those greens is to make them grow them so gardening with kids might be a great idea to get them into healthy eating habits as well! They will no longer turn up their noses at what they have been cultivating for weeks in their youth garden. Gardening with kids will therefore not only promote healthy eating but will also providing the kid gardening with extensive practical knowledge on the subject.

References:

1. Kids Gardening and Gardening For Kids - Kiddie Gardens
2. Why Youth Gardens - Kids Gardening

Getting the most out of your nutrient and additives.

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When you have selected your nutrient and additives if you are using them. Have a clean reservoir then add the water. A little tip if you are making up big batches is to use a pump to stir. Preferably a strong pump so you can add your nutrients and it get stirred up within seconds.

Measure equal amounts of nutrient? A & B solutions and then add them one at a time waiting for a few seconds or minutes (if you have a small pump). When these are mixed well add your additives. Then check the PH and adjust. A safe range for PH is between 5.5 and 6.5. A safe range for the nutrients is between 1.2 EC and 2.5 EC depending on the plant. Always use a weaker mix first if unsure then increase slowly so as not to burn the plant. An instrument for measuring nutrient is called a Truncheon and will save you money on Nutrients plus save plant burnings.

Thanks for reading and we'll be back real soon.

Happy Gardening

By Pepelapue

4/06/2009

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Coco Coir media the friend of the environment fast overtaking other medias.

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Coco coir is fast becoming one of the most used growing media in the world today. It's cheap, it does not get taken from the environment and best of all it does not go to landfill. I'll explain in more detail in a minute.?

Firstly let's see where coco coir comes from. When they have harvested the coconut milk and its edible fruit. They make brooms and all sorts of items from them. When they do this a dust is formed into piles on the floor. They collect this and most of the coco is done in Sri Lanka or India. But some is taken to the Netherlands where they sterilise it in fresh water ponds and buffer it. Then they ship it around the world. This is RHP certfied for quality assurance. Don't buy anything else.

It has a natural friendly bacteria called Trichaderma which is great for nurturing the root system. I have covered where coco coir comes from but where does it go. Well what I do with mine I sprinkle on the garden or on the lawn. It adds humus to poor soil and is full of nutrients. It holds 1000% its weight in water so it assists in these harsh drought times.

Also use for seedlings through to all stages of plant life. Now that's a versatile media for growing all your favourite crops. Pick up a bag today. If you use the blocks that come from Sri Lanka or India sterilise first by boiling.

Happy Gardening

By Pepelapue

4/06/2009

Garden Drainage: Importance Of Improving Soil Drainage

Ensuring good garden drainage is an important part of the gardening process. It is extremely important that all cultivated soil should be well drained. While some plants will need more watering than other which are more drought tolerant, regardless of this, they still require good soil drainage. Apart from water, the majority of plants require air around their roots as well therefore if the soil drainage is poor, so will the air supply, and the plants will suffer in the process.

Clay Drainage vs Sand Drainage

One of the most important questions about improving drainage is what sort of soil should be used in your garden. Is sand drainage better than clay drainage for improving drainage in your garden? Clay soil is probably what you are most likely to find in your garden. Heavy clay soil can be better for garden drainage due to the fact that it can retain nutrients and moisture, and the roots are steadier. The problem with sandy soil drainage however is, when free draining, water and nutrients are often leached out, the structure is not as steady as that of the heavy clay soil. As a result, clay drainage often proves to be a better choice for improving drainage. It is important to understand the nature of the soil you will be using in order to create a perfect garden.

Improving Drainage - Poor Heavy Clay Drainage

When improving drainage for your garden, these tips might come in handy.

• Organic matter is usually the best answer to poor heavy clay drainage. The best material to use is rotted garden compost or farmyard manure. This should be done yearly by digging into the ground, the best time to do this is in autumn.
• Bulky organic matter is good for improving drainage and open up heavy clay.
• Peat and bark are the best as mulches and do a good job of improving the soil surface.
• Always remember to use as much material as possible for better garden drainage.
• If you have a large patch to cover, it is best that you concentrate on one area before moving on to the rest of the area if your material is limited. You will not get the same effect if you try and cover the entire area at once, you will see the benefits of this as time goes on.

Sandy Soil - Improving Poor Soil Drainage

When you are working with sandy soil steps need to be taken in order to increase the water holding capacity for better garden drainage. The reason for this is that sandy soil quickly loses any nutrients that they are given. Digging in plenty of compost is a very effective solution for improving drainage; however never dig deeper than the depth of one spade (25cm to 30 cm). Deep digging will open up the soil even more allowing water and nutrients to escape. The best time for digging is when you are ready for planting; always make sure that the soil is firm after digging or planting.

Poor Soil Drainage - Identify Badly Drained Soil

Very few plants can thrive with poor soil drainage. Certain plants such as vlei and marsh require the ground to be wet in order to thrive and the majority of garden plants cannot thrive if the ground is too wet and therefore improving drainage is vital. Badly drained soil? can be easily identified as it is:

• infertile, which means it is lacking in important soil nutrients
• lacks air
• has reduced bacterial activity which will slow down decomposition and the release of nutrients into the soil.

Soil drainage is a very important aspect of gardening as it not only ensures proper growth of plants but will also prevent dehydration of plants and ensure that your plants receive the right amount of nutrients and water.

Reference:

1. Prepare different soils - Garden Advice

Neem Repel

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